1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optical communication equipment and, more particularly but not exclusively, to optical modulators.
2. Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention(s). Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
An optical modulator is a key enabling element of an optical communication system. To meet the ever-increasing demand for data-throughput capacity, modern optical modulators are expected to support a relatively high (e.g., >10 Gb/s) data rate while having several other desirable characteristics, such as relatively small size, energy consumption, and cost of the constituent electro-optic components. For example, optical modulators capable of operating at about 100 Gb/s are being actively developed.